Instigator / Pro
seldiora's avatar
0
seldiora
1417
rating
158
debates
32.59%
won
Topic
#2502

Argue the Same Side Challenge!

Status
Finished

The debate is finished. The distribution of the voting points and the winner are presented below.

Winner & statistics
Winner
0
0

After not so many votes...

It's a tie!
Tags
Miscellaneous
Parameters
Publication date
Last updated date
Type
Standard
Number of rounds
2
Time for argument
Two days
Max argument characters
5,000
Voting period
One month
Point system
Winner selection
Voting system
Open
Contender / Con
RationalMadman's avatar
0
RationalMadman
1702
rating
574
debates
67.86%
won
Description

In round 1, pro will waive and con will post a topic with definitions, deciding his stance (pro or con) on that topic. Pro and con will argue the same side! No rebuttals are allowed. Voters will vote on who argued the topic better. We cannot use the same arguments. Max of 2 arguments for pro and con each, to make it fair. The topic cannot be a truism (Ex. 1+1=2).

Round 1
seldiora's avatar
seldiora
Pro
#1
waive
RationalMadman's avatar
RationalMadman
Con
#2
Rap is the greatest genre of music, especially lyrically.

Terms are defined by whatever shows up in reliable online dictionaries. We are both 'Pro' in this debate, so side Pro1 (AKA Seldiora) is free to define them if he wants to. I am not going to waste effort just because a description told me to. This doesn't break structure, this lets Pro1 have more power than Pro2.

Pro is free to bring up their two contentions and expand on them, I will repeat neither but there will probably be some overlap in our explanations of our points.
Round 2
seldiora's avatar
seldiora
Pro
#3
1) Because of personal biases and judgement towards rap

People judge different genres of music based on different personal thoughts and ideals. Therefore, there must be an overwhelming evidence to prove the power of rap. This is the only genre where the lyrics have even been used by professional lawyers to try to prove a case. Expert researchers even bother to take the time having to explain and break down rap in order for people to accept that music alone cannot be actually used as evidence. The authors note, "it is significant that the recent usage of lyrics in criminal trials has been reserved nearly exclusively for rap lyrics rather than for lyrics from other musical genres—even those which also contain references to violence or crime. Dennis (2007), for instance, identifies only a single case involving lyrics from another genre in the United States, while Tanovich (2016) reports the same in a review of Canadian cases."

Even Will Smith, a fine rapper in his own right, admitted the power and pressure of being a rapper, standing in contrast against relatively easy pop/rock/other genres: "In rap music, you have to defend yourself. You know, rap music is really aggressive …. You’ll get chewed up and spit out if you’re not confident and if you’re not strong and assertive …. And there’s something in rappers’ eyes, there’s something that gets created in the eyes from having been able to create that defense through an offensive posture, and to be able to be in that space where you can sit in a room and feel confident and you don’t care what nobody says, and you don’t care how they come at you..."

Now, I won't go into too much detail as the rest of the research goes on and on about how exactly to interpret different rap, but the case is strong in the summary to prove the in-depth nature of rap, such that THREE EXPERTS have to spend thousands of words explaining what they mean: "The following discussion identifies four key dimensions of this context: (1) the socioeconomic context, (2) the criminal justice context, (3) the cultural context—both socially and musically, and (4) and the music industry context."

2) Due to inherent elements of rap

There are countless ideas that attribute to what rap is on a common basis, which are usually not attributed to other genres of music. Some data scientists worked together to emulate rap, finding that "By scrutinizing the linguistic features that influence the participants’ authenticity judgments, it is shown that linguistic properties such as ‘syntactic complexity’, ‘lexical diversity’ and ‘rhyme density’ add to the user’s perception of texts being authentic. " Indeed, there has been an entire 200 page book talking about how to analyze the entirety of rap, with the summary stating:

"In rap music, “flow” refers to a rapper’s delivery of the lyrics. This dissertation is a systematic analysis of three main parameters of flow: rhythm, rhyme, and pitch. The first chapter reviews the existing literature on rap and establishes a methodology of analysis and rap transcriptions. Chapter 2 focuses on all rhythmic aspects of rap flow, including issues such as rhythmic complexity and speed, rhythmic motifs, and meter. Chapter 3 is dedicated to dissecting issues of rhyme, ranging from basic rhyme forms, to issues of rhyme regularity and density, to rhyming in non-English rap. Chapter 4 examines vocal pitch as an expressive tool in rap music, categorizing the ways in which rappers use the pitch of their voices to shape their music. Chapter 5 features an extended analysis of a single track, “The Ringer” (2018) by Eminem. This analysis demonstrates the various applications of the methodologies established in Chapters 1-4"

Clear as day, it's very noticeable that there is a lot of ideas that work their way through. In other songs, it's entirely possible to only focus on melody, rhythm, mood, since it can be instrumental, but lyrics are the key to rap, and the dissertation is extra proof that rap needs extra analysis to truly understand and appreciate, unlike other genres of music.

Conclusion: By using expert research instead of cherry picking rap songs, it is doubtless that my arguments are incredibly trustworthy and powerful. The fact that the experts in arg1 AND the expert in arg2 both had countless different perspectives on how rap lyrics can be analyzed, this depth is far, far beyond any of that in other genres. As such, the only conclusion is that rap holds the best, most complex, most meaningful lyrics.
RationalMadman's avatar
RationalMadman
Con
#4
Contention 1: Due to the lyrical range primarily, as well as other factors such as the culture being willing to allow topics and words in songs that others won't, rap has the largest range of all genres, in fact if you combined all genres other than rap, they'd still not equal it in range.

Contention 2: Concious rap has only got a select few pop and/or rock equivalents, very few artists in other genres touch on as deep topics as 'conscious rap'.

Contention 1 is not a copy of Pro's contention 2 (which was copy and pasting a quote from some source about flow and rhyme scheme, combining multiple contentions into one and then passing it off as a single point).

Rap has a range that is unparalleled by other genres, you get violent rap and even inside violent rap there's angry+cocky (Horrorcore), calm and patiently threatening (Gangsta Rap) and then there's what we can call 'very clever pun' rap with artists like Eminem, Canibus, Apathy and K-Rino fusing Horrocore with more intellectual brands of rap where the wordplay itself is the focus.

That is just within violent rap, what the range is. You then have happy rap of a huge variety and this doesn't even begin to explore how many genres rap itself influenced the existence of. Trap EDM is an electronic music evolution of Trap Rap that evolved by combining Gangsta rap with shallow/party rap. Gucci Mane and T.I. are among the fundamental pioneers of this offshoot of rap (that still comes under the genre). Happy rap is not nearly always about drugs but it does tend to be shallow overall. On the other hand, you get artists who make light-hearted raps that truly are just about having a good time or loving oneself (which can border on melancholic in a happy/sad way). 

There's a plethora of artists including Future, Snow Tha Product, YONAS, Nicki Minaj, Lil Wayne, Ludacris (except for his song Runaway) so on and so forth who heavily focus on happy rap (and in Future's case Trap).

Then we get 'emo rappers' which again has a huge range. Hopsin, NF, Witt Lowry, Eminem (when he isn't in his angry mode) and plenty of others including B.o.B. when he's not in his 'conscious rap' mode are extremely emotional rappers. 

Conscious rap is linked to emo rap at times but is about political issues: https://www.udiscovermusic.com/stories/songs-bringing-conscious-hip-hop-back/

With recent events like George Floyd, this has never been more relevant, the rap industry is exploding with songs about the topic:

This has been a topic for many years though, such as this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPqavlJdqaY

Contention 2 continues exactly from this point. There is no other genre at all except for some rock and pop that truly tries to hit home on political topics with more than a vague allure to anarchy or 'love each other'. Conscious rap is specific, at times viciously exposing specific acts of people and calling politicans out but at other time sbeing hopeful and friendly.

Locksmith, Chris Webby, Vinnie Paz, Tech N9ne, Logic, Malz Monday, K.A.A.N. and Kendick Lamar are some of the most phenomenal conscious rappers of our era.